methods facilitating pressure/flux conversion to forces/heat rates

[jaredmagnusson]

Hello,
I'm looking to use either the iterate(Fext=...) or addLoadToNoads() to specify my loads for a LinearThermoelastic3D, but the data I'm mapping onto my FEA model is spatially varying and per unit area (Pascal, W/m2). In order to convert to loads (Newtons, Watts), is there a handy way to interpolate element face information (areas and unit normals specifically) onto their neighboring nodes? This gets complicated with different element types (tris vs quads) and element orders too.

Are there methods within TACS (or any you know of in pyNastran), to facilitate converting positionally varying, nodal pressures and heat fluxes to forces and heat loads?

[jaredmagnusson]

I see methods like addPressureToElements, is there a way for this function to take in both pressures and heat fluxes for a LinearThermoelastic3D simulation? Or can it only do pressures?

[timryanb]

I don't think we've included a wrapper for heatfluxes in pytacs (like a addFluxToElements method) yet, though I think we could add it fairly easily (I'm not sure how much testing there's been for the heat flux classes though).

As for converting distributed loads to nodes, usually these loads are defined at the element level and not the nodes, so I don't think there's an immediate way of doing this through TACS. There maybe a method in the smdogroup/FunToFem library. @sean-engelstad @bburke38 are there any methods in that library for converting distributed loads on elements to point loads on nodes?